by Fiona Brand
She showered and dried her hair, then shook out the red dress she had worn the night she and John had slept together. She intended to look exactly the same, right down to her lingerie, so there was every chance that her appearance would jog his memory.
An hour later, she walked into the glossy new Atraeus Mall and accepted a flute of champagne from a waiter. She reviewed her strategy. It was fairly simple. She would do her best to replay the conversations and actions of the night she and John had spent together in Miami in the hope that he would remember. If that failed, she would resort to seduction.
She spotted John hugging an attractive blonde and her stomach sank. Her fear that John would find someone else before she had the opportunity to remind him they were perfect for each other seemed to be realized.
A tall, dark man who was instantly recognizable as Constantine Atraeus, John’s cousin, joined them and relief flooded her as the blonde woman suddenly fell into context. She was Constantine’s wife, Sienna Atraeus.
Taking a deep breath, Francesca continued walking toward John. His gaze connected with hers and her pulse rate sped up, although she wasn’t about to do anything silly and impulsive in front of everyone. In Miami, they had connected outside on the terrace, so somehow she had to lure John outside for some alone time in the hopes that he would remember.
By the time she reached John, Constantine and Sienna had moved on to speak to someone else.
John stared at her for a perplexed moment. “You’re not Sophie.”
“Sophie couldn’t make it, so she asked me to take her place.”
A waiter drifted by, and she handed him her untasted flute of champagne.
John stared at her hair and shook his head. “I’ve just had the weirdest sense of déjà vu.”
“Not déjà vu,” Francesca said, feeling suddenly confident that everything was going to work out just fine. “It’s a memory. Is there a terrace anywhere around here? You might remember better if we go outside.”
“There’s a hotel above the mall. I’ve booked the penthouse apartment for the night, which has access to a roof terrace.”
Francesca calmly linked her fingers with his. “Can you leave your party for a few minutes?”
After taking an express elevator, John unlocked the penthouse apartment and led the way to the roof terrace. It had a glittering view of the city and, more importantly, large potted trees similar to the ficus trees at the Miami resort, Francesca started toward the largest of them. John stopped her in her tracks. “I’ve been having dreams. Did we—?”
“Yes.” Going up on her toes, Francesca cupped his jaw and lightly kissed him. “We slept together, then the next morning you gave Sophie a lift into town—”
“And we had the accident.” His hands settled at her waist, holding her close. “Memory has been coming back in fragments. I guess I couldn’t believe that I might have slept with Sophie. I mean, I like her, but—”
“She’s not your type.”
He smiled, his teeth flashing white against his olive skin. “And you are, but you’ve always been with someone.”
Pure happiness flooded Francesca. “Not anymore.” She looped her arms around his neck. “Now I’m with you.”
* * *
Sophie, exhausted from the red-eye flight from Miami to Auckland, which had been routed through Venezuela, hired a rental car at Auckland airport and drove to Dolphin Bay. By the time she pulled into the cottage that was situated in a cove adjacent to Nick’s resort, and which he had said she could use for a few days, she was practically dead on her feet. It was only one in the afternoon, but she felt exhausted, probably because she hadn’t really slept on the flight.
She had stopped at a grocery store to get a few things on the way, including some fresh fruit, so she wouldn’t starve. Not that she felt hungry. All she wanted to do was crawl into bed and let the sound of the waves crashing on the beach lull her to sleep.
Hours later she woke up. She wasn’t quite sure what had pulled her out of sleep. Then the sound came again, recognizable as the thunk of a car door closing. It sounded close enough to be in her drive, but it was also possible that the sound had carried across the water from the resort, which shared a common boundary with the cottage.
Tossing back the covers of the bed, she padded to the window but couldn’t see the drive from her room because of a large, leafy oak.
Dragging her fingers through her hair, she walked down the stairs and caught a glimpse of a glossy black four-wheel-drive truck in the drive. She frowned. There was no logo on it, so it wasn’t one of the resort vehicles, and her mother didn’t own a truck; she had a bright red late-model SUV.
Sophie heard footsteps on her path, and a second later a dark shape became visible through the frosted glass of the front doors. By the time the knock came she felt as if she were having one of Francesca’s feelings: she knew it was Ben.
Despite everything that had gone wrong, a pulse of hope went through her, which only went to show how difficult she found it to let go. After quickly pulling on jeans and a sweater, because unlike Miami, New Zealand was in the middle of a chilly winter, she walked down the stairs and unlocked the door. When she opened it, disorientingly, the glow of the setting sun flooded in, making her blink.
Ben stared at her for a long moment. “Thank God you’re all right.”
Abruptly aware of how scruffy she must look, with her hair mussed and no makeup, she crossed her arms over her chest. Her only consolation was that Ben looked just as pale and tired as she felt. “What did you think could have gone wrong?”
“You could have had an accident of some kind. But of course if that ever happened, you would never tell me.”
Her jaw tightened. “I rang you when I had the first one.”
“And failed to tell me you were sitting in a crashed vehicle, down an embankment, with a sprained arm and a back injury. Nick filled me in on the details.”
“It wasn’t all that serious—”
“A helicopter extraction, two dislocated vertebrae and weeks of therapy. No wonder you’re still limping.”
Her brows jerked together. “I recovered. And, in any case, even if you had been in Dolphin Bay, I would hardly have asked you for help because you didn’t want to know, remember?”
His hand landed on the doorjamb, and suddenly he was close enough that she could smell the clean, masculine scent of his skin. “You should have tried me.”
“I did, if you’ll recall, three times, and each time it didn’t work out. I know your parents’ marriage was horrible, I know your fiancée betrayed you. What I don’t know is why you can’t seem to understand that I’m not like them and that I’m worth a chance. Instead, you tried to get Francesca to go on a date with you because you wanted to cure yourself of wanting me. Do you know how much that hurt?”
Ben’s gaze connected with hers for a long, tense moment. “I know how much I hurt you. If I could take it all back I would. I know it doesn’t make up for it, but at that point I thought you’d spent the night with Atraeus. And there was another issue.” He pulled off his shirt. Golden afternoon light turned his skin to bronze and made the tattoo B loves S on his bicep pop.
For a long moment Sophie couldn’t actually believe what she was seeing. “Is that the transfer?”
He dug in his pocket and handed her a familiar envelope. “No. It’s ink. I got the tattooist to use the transfer as a guide.”
Fingers shaking slightly, she opened the envelope and saw the unused transfer. Emotion welled, making her chest go tight. She tried to breathe. “You love me?”
“I’m in love with you. There’s a difference. That was why I was so wary.”
In terse sentences he relayed the facts about the mismatch that had been his parents’ marriage and which had led to his father eventually committing suicide. His broken engagement had seemed to follow the same pattern, and then h
e had met Sophie. He shrugged. “I had gotten to the point where I no longer trusted wealthy women. I expected to be let down, then I fell for you. I couldn’t believe it would work out, so I kept trying to control the relationship by ending it.”
“And what about now? What if we get together and something goes wrong?”
He linked his fingers with hers. “When you walked out on me in Miami, that was a worst-case scenario. I don’t want to lose you again, ever.” He pulled her close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, while still holding her loosely enough that she could pull away if she wanted.
“I love you,” he said flatly, “and the way I see it, we’re both strong enough to carry this relationship. What I need to know is, will you give me another chance. Will you trust me?”
Sophie stared at the stubbled line of Ben’s jaw. She knew he must have caught the next flight out after the one she had taken to get here so fast. But even so, he had made time to get the tattoo, which was permanent. Once again emotion welled in her chest. “Is that a proposal?”
“It is.” He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a jewelry box in Ambrosi’s distinctive colors.
He opened the box, took out a diamond solitaire that glinted with white fire and went down on one knee. “Sophie Messena, will you marry me and be the love of my life, to have and to hold from this day forward?”
Sophie blinked back tears, then in the end just let them come. She held out her left hand. “Yes,” she said as firmly as she could. “As long as you’ll be the love of my life.”
Ben slipped the ring onto the third finger of her left hand. “I will.”
Ben rose to his feet and pulled her into his arms, and suddenly she was home.
* * *
If you loved this book from
Fiona Brand,
don’t miss a single story
in her Pearl House series!
A Breathless Bride
A Tangled Affair
A Perfect Husband
The Fiancée Charade
Just One More Night
The Sheikh’s Pregnancy Proposal
Needed: One Convenient Husband
Keeping Secrets
Twin Scandals
Available now from Harlequin Desire.
Keep reading for an excerpt from Duty or Desire by Brenda Jackson.
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Duty or Desire
by Brenda Jackson
Prologue
The doorbell sounded and Bane Westmoreland wondered who the latecomer could be. All his family and friends who’d been invited to celebrate his and his wife Crystal’s housewarming party were accounted for.
Upon opening the door he found an older couple, in their late sixties, standing there with a baby in their arms.
Bane was certain he did not know the couple. “Yes, may I help you?”
The man spoke. “We hate to impose but we were told Peterson Higgins was here tonight. We are the Glosters, his deceased brother’s in-laws.”
Bane nodded. “Yes, Pete is here. Please come in.”
The man shook his head. “We prefer not to, but we would appreciate it if you could tell Peterson we’re here. We would like to speak with him. We will wait out here.”
Bane nodded again. “Okay, just a minute.” He circled around the room before finally finding Pete in a group in the family room.
“Excuse me, guys, but I need to borrow Pete for a minute,” Bane said to the others. Once he got Pete aside, he told him about the older couple waiting outside. Pete placed his cup of punch aside and quickly moved toward the front door.
When Pete returned about half an hour later, he was carrying a baby in one hand and a diaper bag in the other. Everyone’s attention was drawn to him when the baby released a huge wail.
It seemed all the mothers in the room hurried toward him.
“Whose baby?” Bane’s cousin Gemma was the first to ask, taking the baby from a flustered-looking Pete.
“This is my nine-month-old niece, Ciara,” he said, noticing how quickly the baby girl quieted once Gemma held her. “As most of you know, my brother, Matthew, and his wife, Sherry, were killed in that car crash six months ago. This is their daughter. Sherry’s parents were given custody of Ciara when Matt and Sherry died. But they just gave me full custody of her, citing health issues that prevent them from taking proper care of her. That means I’m now Ciara’s legal guardian.”
Pete looked around the room at the group he considered family and asked the one question none of them could answer.
“I’m a bachelor, for heaven’s sake! What on earth am I going to do with a baby?”
One
Five months later
“I hate that I’m leaving you like this, Pete, but my sister needs me.”
Sheriff Peterson Higgins stared at the older woman standing across the kitchen. He’d known something was wrong the minute he walked through the door.
Well, he had news for Bonnie. He needed her, too.
Pete suddenly felt like a class A bastard for thinking such a thing after she’d just tearfully explained that her sister had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Of course he understood her wanting to go be with her only sister during this time. Even if her leaving would put him in a bind, the last thing he wanted was for Bonnie to feel guilty about going to her family. Somehow, he would find the right person to live-in and keep his fourteen-month-old niece while he worked.
Of course, that person couldn’t really replace Bonnie.
Bonnie McCray had been his mother’s best friend. When Renee Higgins had died, Pete had been sixteen and his younger brother Matthew twelve. Renee had asked Bonnie to always be there for her sons and Bonnie had kept that promise. And when Pete’s father passed away three years later, Bonnie wouldn’t hear of Pete not fulfilling his mother’s dream of him completing college. Bonnie and her husband, Fred, agreed to look after Matt while Pete studied.
It had been hard going to college full-time and making sure the cattle ranch his father had loved remained productive. Luckily, his two best friends, Derringer and Riley Westmoreland, had a huge family of cousins and brothers who’d pitched in and helped out. They also made sure Pete hired the best people to help run things while he attended university.
After he completed college with a degree in criminology, he discovered ranching wasn’t in his blood but a career in law enforcement was. He found out ranching wasn’t in Matt’s blood either when his brother went into the military immediately after high school.
Even so, Pete refused to sell the ranch that had been in the Higgins family for generations. Instead he leased part of the two hundred acres to sharecroppers, and for the other parts he hired a foreman and ranch hands. That freed Pete up to work for the sheriff’s office, a job he’d secured after college thanks to Riley’s oldest brother, Dillon Westmoreland.
Pete loved his career, and the ranch was making plenty of money, which he’d split with Matt before Matt’s death.
A pain settled around Pete’s heart when he remembered the phone call almost a year ago telling him Matt and Sherry had been killed in a car crash. Luckily, three-month-old Ciara hadn�
��t been with them. It had been Matt and Sherry’s “date night” and the baby had been at home with a sitter.
Sherry’s parents, who lived in New Hampshire, had wanted full custody of Ciara and Pete had seen no reason not to give it to them. Matt had adored his in-laws, thought they were good people who treated him like a son instead of a son-in-law. Besides, Pete knew with his bachelor lifestyle, the last thing he could manage was taking care of a baby. When Sheriff Harper retired a few months before, Pete had been selected to replace him. That meant his plate was fuller than ever.
Things had been working out and he’d made a point to call and check on his niece every weekend. He enjoyed hearing about the development of her motor skills and how much she liked to eat.
But five months ago, out of the blue, Sherry’s parents had shown up in Denver to say that health issues meant they needed him to serve as guardian for his niece. They assumed his bachelor days wouldn’t last forever and they thought a much younger couple would have more energy to raise their granddaughter.
At thirty-six, marriage was the last thing on Pete’s mind. However, he gladly gave his niece the love, attention and care he knew Matt would have wanted him to.
Now at fourteen months, Ciara Renee Higgins was ruling the Higgins household, and Pete was glad Bonnie had been there to help out as a full-time nanny. Her husband had passed away a couple of years ago and with her only son living on the East Coast, Bonnie had welcomed the opportunity to take care of others again. As far as Pete was concerned, she’d been a godsend. He honestly didn’t know what he’d have done without her and wondered what he would do now that she would be leaving.
“May I make a suggestion, Pete?”
For a minute he’d been so deep in thought he’d forgotten Bonnie was standing there, waiting for him to say something. “Yes.”
Bonnie smiled as she placed a serving tray on the table with soup and a sandwich. His lunch. He made a habit of swinging by the ranch at noon each day to spend time with Ciara. Although Bonnie’s job was to take care of Ciara, she always prepared lunch and dinner for him, as well. Where did she find the time to do such things? On the days when Bonnie returned to her own home, Pete took care of his niece by himself. Ciara required his full attention and would let him know when she felt she wasn’t getting enough of it. It was only during her nap time was he able to grab a nap of his own.